Fastnet: YW’s Jo still out in front

‘They are moving along very nicely in 10 knots of breeze under the 0.5oz spinnaker, making around 6.5 knots boat speed and pointing directly at the Scilly Isles, which is always good! They know their position in IRC Class 1 but didn’t realise how well overall they were doing, so there are some very big smiles onboard at the moment (they are still lying 16th overall). I have told them to get a move on as we wanted pictures of them finishing in the daylight rather than at night (and by that I mean on Thursday rather than Friday!), however it is looking very likely that it will be the early hours on Friday morning before they arrive. At 15.20 today they had just fewer than 190 miles to go. They did say, however, that after rounding the rock they were stuck in a windless hole for a couple of hours and think that some of their main rivals gained about 4 miles on them, so we won’t get a clearer picture until they round the Scillies which will be in the morning now. Fingers crossed once again, I will report back in when I have any other news. To put it into perspective, no other Reflex 38 yacht has gone around the rock yet and only 4 other yachts in IRC 1b have gone round, some 6 hours plus after Puma.’

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